


ZIG, ZAG, And Being Caught Inbetween

by seriousfic



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:22:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriousfic/pseuds/seriousfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of contravening contraceptives, halved husbands, and other family planning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ZIG, ZAG, And Being Caught Inbetween

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andthen (ohargos)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohargos/gifts).



Narrators are not meant to narrate themselves. It’s déclassé. Flatfooted detectives and teenage vampire fanciers might have pretensions of taking work away from the humble narrator, but every other protagonist is wise enough to leave the storytelling to the professionals. While they worry about slaying dragons and expressing political subtext, allow the narrator to find a different name for zucchini so the vegetable isn’t mentioned twice in the same paragraph.

 

The narrator can concentrate on this because their lives are uneventful. They have countless hours to spend on finding just the right word, and that’s the way they like it. Nonetheless, one particular narrator had found himself in circumstances that were positively… dramatic.

 

The facts were these, as he might say. The Narrator had suddenly learned of a demand for a much-beloved old tale of his, one he still rued never having brought to a conclusion he would deem satisfactory. And now, a chance to once more engage with those storied characters, still brimming with life, aching with character arc, awash with will-they-or-won’t-they. And yet, at the same time, he had come down with a terrible case of bronchitis.

 

It was a nightmare quite outside the Narrator’s genre. For a blissful minute, he had been paralyzed with the sweet agony of which story to tell first—Ned and Chuck’s long-awaited third kiss? Olive’s beautiful, disastrous honeymoon? Emerson’s daughterly reunion? The aunt, the mother, and their once-dead daughter? So many loose ends in need of a pretty bow, and yet how could he possibly give their story a semblance of the heart he had worked so hard at cultivating whilst laid up in a hospital bed?

 

The deadline was looming, and the characters themselves were not getting any younger (it is a fallacy to assume that fictional characters age, but they do grow irrelevant, loaning out their traits to younger generations as they grow further away from their flaws and their unhappy beginnings, crisis middles, to go farther into their happily-ever-afters). The Narrator briefly considered letting the story go sans narration, letting the characters speak for themselves, but no… fanfiction had little enough plot without someone to find it. He’d simply have to find a replacement.

 

With no other recourse, the Narrator called his nephew.

 

***

 

The Nephew was also a narrator, but much younger and, as the Narrator would say with a certain relish, more inexperienced. He hadn’t cut his teeth on fairy tales, nor had he dabbled in murder mysteries. He had done TV movies. On the Disney Channel.

 

Nonetheless, he wasn’t as self-serious as so many narrators were these days, and in quiet moments he could be accused of whimsy. That suited the Narrator fine. The Nephew would be allowed to tell a small story, more of a checking-in on his valued characters than a full reunion. Obviously, the Nephew couldn’t be trusted with resolutions, but something of a stretching out would be fine for his talents.

 

And so, the Narrator called his Nephew, who promised to swing by over the weekend, look over his notes, and tell a nice, quiet story. The plot would not advance. Characters would not be revealed. In the journey of a thousand steps, it would not be the first step, the last, or the step into some rest stop along the way. It would simply be a step.

 

"Like Iron Man 2!" the Nephew exclaimed in apparent realization, his voice coming in annoyingly crisp over the cell phone the Narrator had been forced to use (his preferred rotary phone not being cooperative enough to reach the Nephew). "Got it. Don’t worry about a thing, uncle. It’s getting done. See you next Monday."

 

The Narrator hung up and began to profoundly worry.

 

***

 

Over the course of the next Monday, the Narrator stopped his prior worrying and redoubled his efforts, worrying with the kind of zeal that might drive other men to walk around with a sign namedropping the Apocalypse. But on Tuesday, his Nephew came to visit him in the hospital.

 

"Hey, sorry, am I late?" The Nephew looked around the hospital room sharply, as if trying to allay suspicion that he was late or knew he was late. "I had a few people over. You’ve got a great pad, by the way. I never would’ve known you did a Bond movie."

 

"Yes, well, they were classier affairs back then," the Narrator sniffed. "Lots of models. Do you have it?"

 

"Do I have it—" the Nephew chuckled, taking a valise from behind his back. He laid it on the Narrator’s bed-ridden chest, opened it up, and began deploying papers. They were scuffed with writing—laser-printed, then marked up in the margins. For a moment, the Narrator panicked, thinking he’s been focus-grouped… the unspeakable insult assuming that an audience could not find a work, so the work would be made to find an audience. Then, he saw that no random assortment of mall-goers could have produced such a peanut gallery.

 

In various shades of ink: "Chuck has no superpower—what are the gender dynamics here?" "No Arabic characters; what is the place of Islam in a retro-fifties environment?" "But seriously, Chuck and Olive have to have sex." "Emerson Cod: Transsexual?"

 

"What on _Earth_ …" the Narrator began, summoning just enough strength to manage italics.

 

"Relax, relax, I’m not following all their advice. I just figure if I’m going to put my name on something, it should be _something_." The Nephew managed his italics with ease, as if warming up. "I mean, even Iron Man 2 has Scarlett Johansson, leather catsuit, am I right or am I right?"

 

The Narrator would’ve very much liked a third option.

 

"Alright." The Nephew sat down at the Narrator’s bedside, flipping through the sheaf of papers for the title page and the other pages it was clipped to. "I know you have a thing for showing your guys as kids… that’s cute and all, but I figured I’d cut the bullshit. It’s a fanfic, right, let’s get straight to the action. So they’re going into a morgue…"

 

***

 

"What a blessed day," the coroner said, greeting them with his hands folded together in front of his belly, as if he were on a party line with the Almighty.

 

***

 

The Narrator held up a weak hand.

 

The Nephew interrupted his interruption. "Let me at least get started."

 

***

 

"You know the drill," Emerson Cod said. "You’ve got a body, I’ve got a twenty, we’ll let economics take care of the rest."

 

"I can’t allow that," the coroner replied, his hands not breaking from their holy clench.

 

"He wants more than a twenty? What, is it a supermodel’s body?" Chuck asked, not quite sure how this barter worked.

 

"The economy is bad," Ned, the pie-related small business owner, stated.

 

"It’s not a question of money," the coroner said. "It’s a question of your eternal souls. Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have seen the light. I, too, once waded in the filth of sexual impropriety. I took it all ways. Women dressed as deer, women dressed as bears, men dressed as women dressed as bears. But thanks to the on high, I’m cured! Cured of my crippling addiction! As you can be!"

 

***

 

The coroner, the Narrator reminded his Nephew, was not just a side character, but one who allowed them unofficial access to dead bodies based on a crush upon Emerson Cod.

 

"Closeted, sexless, voiceless gay characters?" the Nephew asked. "What is this, the Middle Ages?"

 

***

 

"We appreciate your concern for our immortal souls and sexual vices," Ned said, "but we just want to look the body over for clues."

 

"It’s alright, it’s alright, I understand the shame. I told myself that I was just ecologically-minded. But you can’t give one hand to the environment while the other’s in your trousers."

 

"Wait, has he thought we were necrophiliacs all this time?" Chuck asked. The notion filled her with a gossipy unease, like being mistaken for one of those teachers who have sex with their students.

 

"Don’t know where he would’ve gotten some idea that some of us like dead folk," Emerson retorted, and put a pointed look on the dead girl.

 

"Some of those bodies were gross!" Chuck told the coroner. "And they were all murdered!"

 

"What did you think he thought?" Emerson asked.

 

"I thought he thought that we were thinking of selling organs on the black market."

 

"You thought wrong," the coroner said. "I can see it all written on your faces. The secret shame," he referred to Ned, "the unabashed sexuality," he referred to Emerson, "the wanton promiscuity."

 

"Was that last one me?" Chuck asked.

 

"If you have pamphlets, we’ll take them," Ned said. "But we really will have to see the body. We’re private investigators. I’m a consultant. Like on The Mentalist."

 

"You consult the detective who consults the police?"

 

"Yes."

 

"And you?" the coroner asked Chuck.

 

"Apparently, I’m a hooker. My inflatable sheep is in my other pants."

 

"She’s my assistant," Ned said over her."

 

"The assisting consulting consultant?"

 

"Correct."

 

"I’m giving you six pamphlets and underlining the parts about how much Jesus will forgive."

 

***

 

The Narrator had once planned a very touching story wherein the coroner would be killed and spent his sixty seconds of second life professing his love for Emerson, thus complicating the search for his killer. The Nephew muttered something about "burying your gays" and continued his story.

 

***

 

"Is no one going to say it?" Chuck asked, looking at the body. "It’s my first half-body."

 

"You can do the honors," Ned said.

 

"He’s half the man he used to be. His story won’t have a leg to stand on. His feet will fail him now. What a way to get ahead in life."

 

"He’s still got a head," Emerson said in the weary tones of a groan.

 

"I didn’t want to harp too much on his waist. Seemed insensitive. He might not’ve had the guts for it."

 

"Can I touch him now?" Ned insisted. "I don’t like looking at half-people. I keep thinking I’ll slip up and confuse him with a dead midget."

 

"No, let’s waste more time, I like my reward money chilled to room temperature." Emerson slapped Ned’s back so he stumbled in the direction of the body, but not the body’s legs, as yet unaccounted for.

 

With a deep breath, Ned pricked the body with his finger. It (now he) came to immediately, eyes lolling about for something, then casting downward. "My junk!" he cried at the sight of what was below his belly button, or rather, what wasn’t.

 

"Yeah, sorry about that, it seems like you were killed," Ned began.

 

"Murdered!" Chuck chimed.

 

"And now you have sixty seconds to tell us who killed you before you’re dead again."

 

"And your name," Emerson added (the body’s ID had either been in his other pants or in the ones that were on his missing lower body). "Maybe the names of any loving, financially well-off relations…"

 

"I’m Nathaniel M. Nunca, of the San Francisco Nuncas, but I don’t have any relations, and I’m the last of the Nuncas. You sure I’m dead?"

 

"Pretty sure," Chuck said. "As you can see, you’re half… I mean, your legs… crap, I used up all the good ones."

 

"Oh, thank God," Nunca said.

 

"Hey, sorry if you’re my first halfling!"

 

"Sorry if I confused you, I’m a member of the Zero Increase Group. We believe that humanity has too many humans, infringing on animals, exhausting natural resources, and crowding each other out until we’re all one big group of over-consumptive consumers. It’s been my lifelong ambition to die without any offspring to surpass the surplus population."

 

"Lifelong is right," Emerson noted. "But you mind telling us who your killer is before he goes decreasing the population anymore?"

 

"Or worse, having kids," Chuck added.

 

"Oh, it must’ve been those ZAG bastards!"

 

"Your own group killed you?"

 

"No, we’re ZIG, they’re ZAG. Zero Aggregation Gestalt."

 

"There seem to be many synonyms in there," Ned said.

 

"We’re both Zero Population Growth advocates."

 

"Isn’t there room for both of you?" Chuck asked.

 

"No! Overpopulation! Haven’t you been paying attention?"

 

That was sixty seconds. Ned touched the body again and hoped he wouldn’t find the afterlife too overcrowded.

 

***

 

Driving in Emerson’s car, with Emerson playing his Dr. Spock tapes loudly (having a lot of catching-up to do in the parenting department), left a lot of time for conversation. Ned and Chuck sat in the backseat and tried not to pick up any childcare tips.

 

"Have you noticed a lot of corpses being materialistic lately?" Ned asked.

 

"I have not. Would this be a veiled comment on my new coffee-maker?"

 

"No, I agree with that purchase. If anything, it was a very non-veiled comment on how many of the people I bring back to life aren’t perturbed by being dead, by but not having something with them, be it a nice suit, a fancy car, or a set of genitalia."

 

"I don’t know, I was kinda feeling Ziggy," Chuck had already nicknamed the victim, or at least their half of him. "If he were a zombie, he’d make someone a very nice zombie husband, provided she didn’t want much in the way of a zombie sex life."

 

"When you think about it, aren’t the family jewels just another set of things we own and take pride in? It’s right there in the name. We don’t call them the family fun-fun-good-time bits, which would be more accurate. Jewels are hard and angular; I feel that’s a bad thing for genitals to aspire to."

 

"You trying to get me to associate your necromancer junk with my kid?" Emerson called back. "Shut up and keep an eye out for ZAG headquarters."

 

"I think it was the last left, where you took a right," Chuck said. "You zigged where you should’ve—"

 

"It’s only been twenty minutes, let it simmer a bit more," Ned advised. "And maybe we should let Emerson learn some things from his tape. It’s not easy to bring up a ten-year-old girl in today’s society."

 

"Are you really that concerned about society’s treatment of preteen girls and materialism among corpses, or are you just trying to preemptively change the subject from what I would posthumously change it too?"

 

"Posthumously?"

 

"I’m undead, deal."

 

"I’m not sure what you’re talking about."

  
"I’m never sure what she’s talking about, and I’m a detective." That said, Emerson cranked the tape player louder.

 

"I want a family, Ned."

 

"You have a family. A family composed of large black men, former jockeys, fake aunts, real aunts, and one self-deprecating pie baker who’s a bit of a loser, but that’s still more of a family than most child singers get."

 

"I don’t want my family replaced, I want it to grow. We have all this caring floating around, like a big overflowing burst pipe of care-juice, but Olive’s got Randy and Emerson’s got his daughter and you’ve got me. If there’s anything I learned from the case of the adorable orphaned urchin Orson Orpheus, it’s that there aren’t a lot of places with an overflow of caring. We should get our own adorable urchin to soak up that caring like a sponge."

 

"I’m doubtful as to the chances that a child would soak up that caring and then squeegee it out. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would lay disposable income on that child soaking up that caring and then bursting into flames."

 

"I’ve never heard of a sponge doing that."

 

"Children aren’t sponges."

 

"You really talking about having kids?" Emerson asked.

 

"Yes," Chuck said, as Ned said "No."

 

"Oh hell no," Emerson said.

 

"Emerson supports me, I have a majority and a mandate," Ned declared.

 

"Emerson doesn’t get a vote!" Chuck declared right back.

 

"Am I gonna be your baby’s godfather, uncle, au pair, or whatever the hell you white people call someone who babysits for free?"

 

"You would be so _cute_ …" Chuck declared firmly.

 

"I get a vote. Vote’s no. How the hell you even gonna have a kid when you ain’t been to first base since she died?"

 

"Artificial insemination."

 

Ned broke in, finger raised like there was a button above his head which he could press to slow the conversation. "Not that I ever read many comic books on account of the colors making my head hurt, but from watching comic book movies, I think being grown in a test tube and being able to bring the dead back to life would result in someone who dresses in the evil shades of spandex, or at least lots of leather in a bad, non-X-Men way."

 

"We have no way of knowing that you’d pass on your ability to bring back those who have passed on."

 

"Hold on." Emerson turned off the tape deck. "I don’t know much about insemination besides having done it once, but wouldn’t a part of it have a bit of him getting a bit in you?"

 

"My touch doesn’t work with… bits," Ned said, now looking distinctly uncomfortable, as opposed to his normal uncomfortable. "Otherwise, I could sell my nail clippings as anti-zombie ordinance."

 

"That’s fingernails. This is… not. How would—"

 

"It came up," Chuck said.

 

"See, sometimes when people who can’t be together want to be together, they get together and don’t be together, but do things that are like being together… in front of each other."

 

(Distantly, the Narrator pressed the call button for his nurse.)

 

"So you know for a fact that--"

 

"It came up," Chuck repeated.

 

"I think I see the ZAG headquarters," Ned said, distracted from his discomfort by unease.

 

"Where?"

 

"See the woman holding up the sign?"

 

The woman was a five-story building with her legs firmly shut. The sign read "Parking in the rear." As a rule, the detectives did not argue with fifty-foot-high women.

 

***

 

The Zaggers were nice enough to wear red sashes over their street clothes, signifying (everyone supposed in a simultaneous "ah!" moment) their commitment to curbing the rising population by their own death, vis-a-vie natural causes. There didn’t seem enough of them to warrant a five-story building, but they shared office space with the Parents Television Council.

 

In an office full of posters with anti-baby slogans, they talked to Miranda von Neutrum, the woman who insisted on bringing the ZAG into the zeitgeist.

 

"Let’s face facts," she said. "Babies are louder, dumber versions of people."

 

"Don’t you like people?" Chuck asked.

 

"People watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians," she replied.

 

Emerson, for completely non-racial reasons, had a thing for Kim Kardashian. "Yeah, yeah, I hate waiting in line at the post office too. Is that why you whacked Nathan Nunca?"

 

"Nathan Nunca?" Miranda cried.

 

"He’s down at the city morgue," Chuck said. "Someone cut the legs out from under him."

 

"She doesn’t mean that in the colloquial sense," Ned added. "Although it is a possibility that the killer did that as well as cutting him in half."

 

"Shameful!" Miranda said. "Nunca was a great man. The world will never see his like again."

 

"I’m sure he would’ve wanted it that way," Chuck said.

 

"Yes. Of course." Miranda pulled a tissue out of her desk and dabbed her eyes. "It was those ZIG bastards, wasn’t it? He never should have joined them!"

 

"Would you say he…" Chuck began, but Emerson kicked her leg.

 

"We’re a little confused," Ned said. "If you’re both against overpopulation, why are your two groups so opposed to each other?"

 

"It’s simple. ZIG doesn’t fuck."

 

***

 

The Narrator, who had been making the best of the story much as he was trying to do with his Jell-o mold, choked on his gelatin. He hadn’t known that was possible. "No, no, absolutely not…"

 

"What?" the Nephew asked.

 

"This is a family story."

 

"Dude just got cut in half! That was some Saw shit!"

 

"Nephew…"

 

" _Uncle._ "

 

"Change it."

 

The Nephew sighed and reached for his Wite-Out.

 

***

 

Miranda cleared her throat. "Sorry, I’m fighting a cold. As I was trying to say, ZIG doesn’t fornicate. ZAG does. We simply practice safe sex. We couldn’t conceive of letting conception happen."

 

"You seem pretty shook up by Nunca’s death," Ned noted. "Since when does a ZAG give a fig about a ZIG?"

 

"Nunca wasn’t staying there," Miranda confessed. "He was coming over to ZAG. He had such marvelous ideas—candy-coated contraceptives, a profusion of prophylactics, Plans C through H to go with Plan B. His fertile imagination would make sterility sexy."

 

"Uh-huh," Emerson replied drolly. "Ain’t nobody gets that bent out of shape over keeping baby-mamas babes. You were clearing a space in your trunk for his junk."

 

"It’s true!" Miranda wailed. "Nunca was the most passionate, lovely, barren man I’ve ever met. I would’ve born his virtual children if only he’d asked, but another woman had her hooks in him. The last time we spoke, he swore his heart belonged to ZIG, and making it big. But I knew the real reason. Sharon S. Hagley."

 

"Another woman!" Chuck cried, her soap opera zeal zestful.

 

"The original woman," Miranda corrected. "His wife. Without her, he’d have no reason to dig ZIG."

 

"What man with his junk still stuck on would say no to getting in the bag at ZAG for some hag?" Emerson asked.

 

"A wag?" Ned suggested.

 

***

 

"I do not sound like that," the Narrator protested.

 

"Just because it hasn’t been forty years, seven months, four weeks, three days, two hours, four minutes, seven seconds, and two shakes of a rat’s tail since Ned’s mother died…"

 

***

 

ZIG headquarters was closed, due to family organization complaints at a building the shape of a chastity belt, stating that architecture was not meant to be anatomically correct. But a quick check of their Twitter feed revealed they had a booth a Bodys World, the German exhibit of plastination-preserved human bodies shown sans skin. Bodys World had fallen on hard times in the past year, owing to lawsuits from the Grammarians of America, but it’d recently been saved by a grant from J.C. Penney. Now, it was free to the public as a combination anatomical study and fall fashion show.

 

ZIG had set up their booth between some corpses tossing a stationary Frisbee around and a woman with no skin modeling a sundress. Hagley was handing out condoms, having apparently overestimated the eroticism of the nude human body when it lacked skin. "Good afternoon, fellow excesses! Ma’am, have you ever considered having your tubes tied?"

 

"Every time I hear they’re making another Shrek movie," Chuck replied. "We’re not here to talk tubes or ties, though."

 

"What could be more important than not having kids? Children are the dystopian future, after all."

 

"Your husband was found halved," Emerson coughed.

 

"Yes, I thought as much. The loss of his lower body comes as a surprise, but when he went missing, I knew he must’ve been killed to leave my side."

 

"No chance he left you for another woman then?" Emerson asked.

 

"One who was okay with a hubby that wanted more than hand holding?" Chuck added.

 

"Not that we have anything against handholding," Ned concluded. "But would this hypothetical other woman go by the name von Neutrum?"

 

"That tramp!" Hagley hissed. "She doesn’t love him like I do. She loved him with her baby factory!"

 

"You’re not exactly sounding the innocent bell," Emerson pointed out. "You got an alibi?"

 

"Of course. I was at a ZIG meeting. The minutes will prove I was there."

 

"We didn’t tell you the time of death yet," Emerson said flatly, actually irritated by how quickly she was crumbling.

 

"And how’d she know which half of the body was snatched?" Ned asked himself. "That was pretty much the first question we asked."

 

"They can’t all be arch-criminals," Chuck noted. "Some of them are going to be Archie comics criminals."

 

Hagley gave Ned a sudden shove, knocking him into Emerson. The desired pile-up of persecutors did not occur, as Ned bounced off the hardy PI and landed in the middle of a post-mortem poker game.

 

Meanwhile, Hadley had drawn a gun, her aim drawn to Chuck’s head. "Back off or I give her cranium a vasectomy!"

 

Emerson drew on her. "Do it and your face is getting bullet-pregnant! Great, now they got me doing it," he added in a grumble.

 

The Mexican stand-off was complicated by Ned, who was both ethnically and metaphorically non-Mexican, pulling himself to his feet by, as it happened, the corpses surrounding him. "I’m sure we can find a peaceful resolution to our current—"

 

"Dude! What happened to my tats?" "Where’s my tan?" " _Where are my implants!?"_

 

Hagley, naturally, noticed the recent resurrection. "Recreasing the population? _You’ll bankrupt Social Security!"_

 

She took aim at Ned, who took a body and jerked it in front of him as an ex-human shield. Unfortunately, his touch also undid the undead, and after taking one bullet, the shield slumped back to death.

 

Hagley cursed and tried to prim her revolver again, which was harder than it looked. Panicked, Ned glanced at the nearest corpse. "Quick! Jump in front of me!"

 

"No way, brah. I don’t wanna get shot!"

 

"You’re already dead!"

 

"Yeah, but look at me! It really makes you appreciate the natural artistry of the human body—"

 

Hagley’s next shot went wide, hitting the argumentative but appreciating aberrant in the back of the head.

 

She now had the hang of chambering. "Whatever you do for a living, it’s now a job a freshly-graduated Liberal Arts major can do!" she barked, precisely sixty seconds after Ned had touched three posed ex-poker players. With a quiet squeak of "Comeuppance!", Hagley (who had not fled to a safe distance when bullets were fired, like the fashionistas and Goths) keeled over.

 

Emerson Cod shook himself. "Shoot! When is your necromancer ass gonna stop _doing that_ with me in the room?"

 

***

 

Afterward, with the revitalized corpse dodging accusations of fraud from customers who had paid good money to see a corpse without skin, not a man with a costume, the group regrouped at Olive Snook’s restaurant The Intrepid Cow, which Ned frequently frequented because he could actually eat the food.

 

"What do you think drove her to it?" Chuck asked. "Once you become celibate for secular humanist reasons, you’d think that’s as crazy as a body can get."

 

"Split personality," Emerson figured. "To make the relationship work, she suppressed her own desires so deep they formed an alter ego. Then when she thought he was dipping his pen in another non-profit organization’s ink, she snapped. Cutting off his junk and everything else below the waist, that’s textbook Freud."

 

Everyone, even Olive who had stopped by to personally bring them their food, took a moment to stare.

 

"Child psychology. Happens all the time to tweens in South Dakota."

 

"You don’t suppose other relationships could be like that?" Ned wondered out loud. "Maybe someone could be so happy with the someone they love that they assume the other somebody is just as happy, but really he’s just getting everything he needs from the relationship while not giving her everything she needs. Which isn’t even a relationship, it’s more like overcharging someone at your high school retail job. Sure, you can pocket the change, but you don’t do that to your friends. Especially your best friend."

 

"I can’t even tell you how glad I am I’m not your best friend." Emerson stood, having finished his mac and cheese while Ned was monologuing. "I’m picking my little girl up from daycare."

 

Chuck dropped a napkin over Ned’s hand and squeezed it. "Are you sure about this? What about the chance that your kid can talk to the dead?"

 

"Eh. We’ll adopt."

 

***

 

"And that’s what I’ve got so far," the Nephew declared, now flipping through pages of notes and stray doodles. "Adopted kids are way better story engines than babies. They can talk, their parents are dead—"

 

"Kids are precocious!" the Narrator replied. "Saccharine!"

 

"Oh, sure, _kids_ would be precocious. I’m telling you, we could get years of stories out of a new cast member."

 

"We already had a perfectly good cast! But they didn’t even show up in your story! Olive didn’t have any lines!"

 

"She’s a difficult character to write outside the Ned thing, and that’s played out!" the Nephew accused.

 

"And the aunts?"

 

"The ones who both slept with the dude from Newsradio?"

 

The Narrator folded his arms.

 

"Oh, I suppose you have something better."

 

"As it so happens, with just a few minor changes, and a modicum of care, your story could fulfill its purpose."

 

"Oh, yeah, well, c’mon." The Nephew folded his arms as well. "Hit me."

 

The Narrator stared for a cool second. The nurse had told him to take it easy, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her (he was another story, but good narrators never died, they just waited a long time between cliffhangers).

 

"Have a seat," the Narrator said, gesturing to one.

 

The Nephew sat, clutching his valise to his chest almost protectively. Turning his notebook to a blank page, he took his pen out and pressed out the tip with a sharp click.

 

"Four months, three weeks, two days, and eleven hours since we last spoke of them, the Piemaker, the dead girl who went by Chuck, the living girl who went by Olive, the private investigator who went by whatever name was written on his checks, and a dog named Digby who aged neither in dog years nor at all, were about to embark on case with half the usual victim and double the usual dead bodies…"


End file.
